


Written in the Stars

by Abyssinia



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-10
Updated: 2005-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abyssinia/pseuds/Abyssinia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>A few weeks in, I wasn't the only one surprised when Lipton managed to field strip an M-1 in under 90 seconds. Sobel was surprised too, but as much as he cursed he couldn't take away the promised early night if Lipton could do it.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Written in the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://likethesun2.livejournal.com/profile)[**likethesun2**](http://likethesun2.livejournal.com/) and betaed by [](http://hiyacynth.livejournal.com/profile)[**hiyacynth**](http://hiyacynth.livejournal.com/) and [](http://nullsechs.livejournal.com/profile)[**nullsechs**](http://nullsechs.livejournal.com/)  
> Luz and Lipton friendship. Lipton backstory.

The room is mostly dark - just enough light at one end to make out the shape of a man sitting in a folding metal chair. He shakes a small box of matches and lights one, bringing it to the cigarette in his mouth. For a second the flickering red light illuminates a curved nose and bangs sticking straight out over dark eyes. He shakes the flame out, throws the match to the floor and takes a long, grateful drag on the cigarette before looking up.

He waves the cigarette in the air for a second and announces to the darkness, "You know, they say these things will kill you." A short, quick belly-laugh echoes in the room, narrowly avoiding turning into the cough of a lifelong smoker.

"Anyway, you wanted to hear about Carwood Lipton?" There is a long silence, which he eventually takes for assent. He ponders the burning cigarette a minute, turning it in his fingers. "I first met good ol' Lip in the summer of 1942 at Camp Toccoa, Georgia."

******

_He remembers summers at his cousins' farm - climbing the hills of West Virginia with his brother in worn-out overalls and bare feet, rising at dawn to coax warm milk from sleepy cows. And he remembers Huntington - sneaking off to catch bits of jazz music creeping under doorways or spend a few nickels on candy or marbles at the general store. He remembers hiding away with a book to avoid his mother's endless list of chores and meeting the neighborhood kids for games of stickball in the street._

Or maybe he doesn't. The memories all feel unreal - brief flashes as though they were displayed for a few off-color seconds by the fireworks he remembers loving only to disappear into silence and darkness. Sometimes he doesn't believe he was ever young, wonders if he invented this childhood from what movies and books told him it was supposed to be like. The one memory he is sure of is when it all ended.

We fell upon Toccoa like a bunch of boys starting some exciting adventure. By our third trip up Currahee, everyone was settling into his place in Easy. Frank was resigned to being our runt; Skip and Malark were already practically joined at the hip. Gonorrhea made it clear what a tough bastard he was gonna be and even though Bull didn't open his mouth often, we knew it was worth listening when he did.

We also could tell who wasn't gonna make it. The first week wasn't over before we were losing guys, and it was rarely a surprise when someone wasn't at reveille. Some of the other guys started a little pool, just among themselves, over who would be next. I didn't play, but I knew one guy I would've bet on if I had: Carwood Lipton.

It wasn't that he wasn't a good guy, or wasn't tough. It wasn't that he was struggling more than the rest up Currahee, or couldn't shoot straight. It was that he was too damn alone. He didn't talk or joke with the guys running next to him, only talked at the mess hall if someone asked him something directly. He'd never ask anyone for help, always look to do things on his own. I once caught him watching one of our pillow fights and he just looked like he didn't know what to make of us, shouting war whoops and chasing each other up and down the bunkhouse with Army-issue bags of feathers.

A few weeks in, I wasn't the only one surprised when Lipton managed to field strip an M-1 in under 90 seconds. Sobel was surprised too, but as much as he cursed he couldn't take away the promised early night if Lipton could do it. We didn't have passes, but just a few hours of downtime was heaven at that point. I walked past Lipton's bunk on my way to join some of the other fellas shooting dice in the back and saw him ignoring the pen and paper in front of him.

I had to cough twice before he looked up. "It's Lipton, right?" When he nodded I indicated the back of the bunkhouse with a shake of my head. "Coupla us're starting up a game of craps back there. Seems Malarkey's never played and Skip's dying to teach him -- maybe get his month's pay in the process. Wanna join?"

He just stared at me a minute before shaking his head and turning back to his unwritten letter.

I shrugged, figuring I'd tried, and giving him up to a lost cause. I got as far as three bunks away before he called out, "Hey, Luz, wait a second." I didn't know he even knew my name.

We sat down with a handful of other guys, not all of whom would still be playing with us in a month, and even fewer in a year or two. But that wasn't something you thought about. Next to me Skip tugged on my sleeve and hissed, "What's he doing here?"

I just turned to him and grinned before leaning over to whisper at him, "Look at him. Think he's played much? This way we'll have two people's pay in our pockets when we're done."

Skip quickly explained the rules. Malarkey sat, nodding his head, obviously trying to work out some hidden trick. Lipton barely seemed to be paying attention. Either he was going to be easier than we thought or we were in trouble. Talbert pulled out some dice, money went on the floor and we stationed Penkala at one of the windows to alert us if Sobel should decide to inspect.

Twenty minutes in, after Malarkey's third straight lucky roll, Guarnere stood up in disgust. "Ain't gonna give that damn Mick all my dough," he announced before stalking back to his bunk, where he flopped down and pulled out the latest girlie magazine his brother had sent. Malarkey was so busy counting his money he barely noticed. Lipton just reached out for the dice, but I got a suspicion he was paying more attention than he was letting on.

Within an hour all of us were done. Malarkey still wanted to play but our empty wallets stopped us. "C'mon Malark," Skip told him, dragging him up by his arm, trying to ignore how much of his own money was stuffed in his friend's fists. "The most important thing you gotta learn about craps is to quit when you're ahead."

They walked away, Malarkey telling some joke that had them both laughing, hands on each other's shoulders, heads bowed ever so slightly towards each other. You could tell with these two, either they both would make it or neither would.

Talbert stood up next, yawning, "I'm done for the night. Gotta get some rest for tomorrow's race up that damn mountain. Thanks for the early night Lipton." As the others made their way to their own bunks, I stood and reached a hand to Lipton. He looked uncertain for a second and I almost had to tell him to take it already but he grasped my hand and actually let me help him up.

"I swear that boy had a leprechaun on his shoulder," I laughed. "How much you lose?"

"Nothing."

I stopped and looked at him. "Serious? How much you win?"

"Nothing," he said, sitting on his bunk. "Night, Luz."

Years later, when Buck talked me into trying to hustle some cigarettes from the new boys I remembered the one night Lip gambled with us, and how he managed to not lose money while not taking any of ours.

After that night, Lipton was different. I soon realized he didn't just know my name, he knew the name of every guy in the goddamn company. He seemed to know everyone's strength and everyone's weakness. He was always quietly there to give Frank a hand over the wall, to give Hoobler pointers on shooting just a little bit straighter at the rifle range or encourage Shifty to aim for a target just a little bit smaller. None of us were surprised to come home one night and see him quietly sewing new chevrons onto his sleeve. Of course, he looked up long enough to greet the group of us, ask Skip how Faye was doing, see if Alton's sister had had her baby, and offer some of the cookies his wife had sent.

Later that summer, on one of our night excursions I found myself sharing a foxhole with Lipton. It was our first night actually sleeping in holes we'd dug ourselves and I have to admit there wasn't a whole lot of sleeping in that field that night. We sat there, stared at the stars and talked about home, girls and a little wondering where they'd send us after training. Really, I talked. Lipton never was all that much of a talker. Lucky for me he could listen though.

My mouth got away from me and I told him how I hadn't thought he would make it in Toccoa. Asked him why he changed. He looked surprised and didn't answer me for long enough that I began to worry I'd pissed him off.

Finally he pointed to the sky. "Anyone ever teach you about constellations, Luz?"

"You mean the Big Dipper? Sure."

"Well, each of those stars up there is burning entirely alone. There aren't any other stars to help it out, keep it company, give it any extra fuel. But when we look at the sky, we don't just see the individual stars. For centuries we've grouped them together, found patterns, formed them into constellations. And it's these constellations people use to navigate or tell time or do astrology."

"So they stand alone together, huh?" I laughed. "Just like us!"

Lipton nodded and grinned at me. "When I came to Toccoa I was so used to relying on myself for everything, I never thought of doing anything else. But I started to see what Lieutenant Winters could get us to do- how working together we got done things I didn't think possible. I wanted to learn how to do that. So I had to join your constellation."

It made as much sense as anything. And I guess that's what made Lipton special, he took the time to step back and really see what was happening. That night I decided we needed to make sure we never lost Lipton. I pulled out my Lucky Strikes, offered him one that I knew would be refused and lit one for myself, staring at the night sky. I pointed to one star - twinkling and faintly red in the sky. "Can I be that one?"

He just looked at me and laughed. "That's a planet, Luz."

_Pouring rain has kept them in, and he's lying on his stomach looking at his brother across a chessboard. He knows that soon he'll have his brother's queen and the game not long after. His mother is reading nearby, or pretending to. He can tell she is nervous because she is playing with her hair, and she hasn't turned a page in the last ten minutes. But he doesn't ask her what's wrong because she might notice how late it is and send them to bed before he can win._

His hand has enclosed around his brother's knight - chubby fingers over cold black stone - when a knock on the door makes them all jump. His mother smoothes her hair before answering, and Carwood and his brother peek around the corner in time to see a dripping police officer and his mother muffling a gasp with her hand.

The backseat of the police car smells old, musty, and faintly of vomit. His brother clutches his hand and their short legs dangle off the seat as they stare at the rain hitting the windshield. The hospital is white and sterile and smells of alcohol and they sit on a hard, wooden bench and mutely watch the door their mother disappeared into.

Eventually his brother falls asleep, head on the wooden slats, legs curled under him and Carwood is tired of waiting. He slides off the chair and pads to the door, opening it as quietly as he can. "Mama?" he whispers into the dimly lit room. He sees her kneeling beside a bed, head down and hands reaching under the sheet. On the bed is his father, skin pale under trails of blood, and Carwood knows he isn't breathing. The chess knight hitting the tile floor and the nose breaking off to slide into a corner is the loudest sound he's ever heard.

He spends most of the service standing in a corner, tugging at the collar of the borrowed black suit. He nods to the grown-ups with their sad-masked faces and accepts pats on the head and the occasional hug, not knowing the rules of whatever game they're playing. The pastor comes over to him with his steely eyes and fiery voice that every Sunday had terrorized young Carwood with talk of Hell and eternal damnation. He kneels down to look Carwood in the eyes and tells him in no uncertain terms that he is now the man of the family and his mother and brother are his responsibility.

The wind at the cemetery ruffles the women's skirts and flaps the men's jackets like crow's wings as he helps carry the wooden coffin. With each heavy step of this funeral march he feels a piece of himself tear away, the pastor's words echoing in his skull. As his uncle drives them away, Carwood twists in the back seat to watch the cemetery slowly fade from sight. There two solemn men with shovels are slowly throwing dirt over his father's body.

Of course, we almost lost Lipton in France. At Carentan.

Hoobler and I found Blithe crouched against a wall, rubbing his eyes. He wasn't bleeding or nothin' but he just kept staring through everything. When he told us he couldn't see, Hoobler rolled his eyes at me but we helped him back to the aid station and Doc.

We got him sitting in a corner - all the tables were full of guys hurt worse. Hoob went to get Doc Roe and I looked up and saw Lipton lying on the table in front of me all bandaged up - so many wrapped around his face I almost didn't know it was him at first. Leaving my radio on the floor, I got up and took his uninjured hand. "Hey, Lip. It's Luz. How ya doing there? Doc Roe treating you good?"

His eyes were unfocused from the morphine, and I could tell he was struggling to stay awake. They tell us loss of blood and morphine will do that to you. He was having a hard time speaking, and I had to bend down to hear him. "..we win? …men okay?"

"Yeah Lip. We done good. And don't you worry cause we're taking care of everything." I knew it was useless telling him not to worry, but he had to hear it.

"Ever play chess, Luz?"

I shook my head. "Nah. Used to watch the old guys in the park play. One of 'em would give me a nickel sometimes to distract the other guy so he could move the pieces. You play?"

"Not since I was ten." He sighed a bit, started tugging at a bandage, and then stopped himself. "These battles…just big games of chess…move pieces…attack…sacrifice pawns."

"C'mon, Lip, you've got too many stripes to be a pawn."

He laughed. Sort of. More of a startled choking. "No. I'm a knight. A shattered knight." I stood another minute, not really understanding what he was babbling about, but Doc Roe came to check his bandages, and pointed me outside. He didn't need an uninjured guy in his way.

It was Frank who later told me what happened. About Lip standing exposed in the middle of the street and yelling at everyone to get out of the street - protecting everyone else and ignoring himself. I knew right then we'd have to do a better job watching out for him if he was gonna make it.

Course it was exactly behavior like that that made him first sergeant. Until D-Day Evans was our first sergeant. At least as far as the Army was concerned. But he never really was. Evans was too busy following Sobel around, kissing his ass to really take care of us the way a first sergeant should. We couldn't trust him to watch out for us when we were constantly looking to keep him from catching us at something.

Lipton was our first sergeant long before the Army finally admitted it and gave him those extra stripes. He took all the hard jobs - getting us moving when we were complaining, taking care of all the problems, making sure we were up to date on wills and life insurance. I still don't know how I managed to avoid trouble when the first platoon convinced me to imitate Major Horton, but to this day I'm sure Lip had a hand in it. So when Smokey finally announced it on our last, beautiful night in Aldbourne, none of us were surprised. We'd all been acting like he had the job all along anyway.

He had it easy at first, when Winters was still in command. If anyone took care of us as much as Lipton, it was Winters. Heyliger was good too. But Foxhole Norman was another beast entirely. I don't know where the Army found Dike or why they stuck us with him, but I wish they'd left him under whichever boulder he crawled out from. It was then that Lipton really had to step up and lead us.

_At first everyone is friendly and helpful. Neighbors bring over bread or occasionally a meal. Mrs. McNally next door makes sure Carwood and his brother get to school on time. But soon enough the stock market crashes and everyone in the country is too distracted with their own problems to really pay attention to their neighbors. If anything, they start crossing the street if they see the Liptons coming, maybe to avoid any bad luck rubbing off, maybe out of shame that they can't offer help._

They cling desperately to the lifeline of the boarding house. People aren't traveling much but Huntington has a few factories and is a stopping point for trade along the Ohio River so dockworkers are always needed and the coal mines are often looking for new men willing to risk their lungs to put dinner on the table. Carwood makes sure everyone tells any new workers about the boarding house. He keeps the repairs made, and helps his mother balance the books. Somewhere within all that he finds time to study because some day he's going to get beyond all this.

When Carwood is sixteen the quarterback takes the football team to a place in the woods where his uncle distills alcohol. Most of the boys play football for the girls, the glory, but Carwood does it for the hope that maybe it will get him to college. He usually does the bare minimum - practices and trainings, avoiding the extraneous get-togethers - always citing the siren call of work, helping his mother. He isn't sure why he goes that day. Maybe he's still flushed after their narrow win, maybe it's that his touchdown got them that win. Whatever the reason he decides that night the house can run without him.

He stumbles home late through the sleepy streets of Huntington and opens the door to find his mother waiting for him. Her look of concern turns to anger when she smells the alcohol one of the other guys spilled on him, notices the unsteadiness of his stance. His mother isn't prone to emotional displays. Her eyes get cold and hard and she speaks in a flat, quiet voice. "How dare you come back to this house like that? You walk right out that door and don't come back until you're sober and cleaned up. And don't you ever come through that door in that condition again. Ever. You hear me Carwood?"

He's so shocked he actually leaves - closes the door and sits down on the porch before he realizes what he's doing. Over the crickets he can hear the quietest of sounds coming from the house and realizes his mother is crying, something she hasn't done in six years. Unnerved, he wanders to the backyard and spends the night in the toolshed, head pillowed on a bag of soil, nestled between a rake and shovel.

In the painful brightness of dawn he washes off at the pump and sneaks inside and upstairs to change clothes and wash the old ones. He spends a week tip-toeing around his mother but she never mentions it. He vows to never drink again.

There was something unassuming about Lip. In a way he was always there and you always knew it and we were grateful to have him around. But in another way you barely noticed him. We could go to pubs and spend an hour laughing and drinking and suddenly he'd say something, and you would swear he hadn't been there a minute ago.

Of course he never drank with us. Not once. Some of the guys, especially Bill, would give Winters crap about not drinking. But they never bothered Lipton. If a flask was passed around, like on the night they drove us out to Bastogne, he'd just quietly send it on, and most of us never realized he didn't sip.

Bastogne. That's a place I would have loved to forget. Or never been in the first place. We lost a lot of good guys there in that forest. All under the guidance of Foxhole Norman.

Well, not really. It was Buck and Lipton who lead the company. Dike could barely find his own foxhole, he sure wasn't gonna lead us in between his yawns. It was Buck and Lip who had been there since D-Day - Buck and Lip who led us through Bastogne, held us together. Buck and Lip. The officer who acted too much like an enlisted man and the enlisted man who acted too much like an officer.

The Army's got all sorts of rules to keep officers and enlisted separate. But Buck wasn't very good at following them. Maybe he thought we were more fun. He drank with us, gambled with us, sat in foxholes and told stories with us. Lipton somehow managed to keep some of that separation officers are supposed to have while still knowing all of us better than we knew ourselves.

_The summer before his senior year of high school, Carwood begins to think he'll never make it out of Huntington, never get beyond the life he has now. He can't go to college right away, even if there were money, because he needs to stick around and help his mother and brother. He can sense the trap, feel himself a bit more stuck each day, tying him more and more firmly to this town._

One day in July a man shows up at the door, poorly dressed, unshaven, maybe the age his father would be if he'd lived. His mother turns white as a ghost when she sees him, and Carwood watches her hurry the man inside, taking note of his very pronounced limp, before going back to pushing the mower over the grass.

Three weeks later Carwood is going over the books and realizes the man has never paid for the days he's been with them. The man has been trouble already, coming back at all hours of the night, sometimes drunk, and the men in the neighboring rooms have occasionally complained of shouts in the middle of the night. On his way to boot the disruptive freeloader, he finds his mother on the stairs and angrily informs her of the problem.

She draws her lips into a thin line and shakes her head. "No son. He can stay here as long as he likes and we won't charge him anything."

Carwood opens his mouth to protest but she shakes her head at him. "No. Don't argue with me about this. He stays and we don't bother him. If you're worried about him disturbing the others give him an end room and leave the one next to him empty."

Carwood can't believe his mother, but does what she says. A week later he helps the man move to a room at the end of the hall. The man doesn't have much to move, which suits Carwood fine since he's hoping to finish his chores with time to go out tonight, and they quickly finish the job in silence. Carwood is halfway out the door when he first hears the man talk. "You look just like your father when he was your age, you know. Especially when you scowl like that."

Carwood stops dead in the doorway and turns to look at the man, reaffirming his first assumption that he's never seen him before this summer. "How'd you know my father?"

"Oh, we grew up together. I was great friends with your father. And your mother." The man turns away and begins unpacking his meager belongings. When it's clear that he isn't going to say any more, Carwood leaves and hurries to find his mother.

She's pruning her rose garden - the one luxury she still allows herself. Carwood starts with the simple question. "Who is he?"

With a sigh, she rocks back onto her heels, brushes stray blonde hair from her face and looks at him. "What did he tell you?"

"Just that he knew you and dad. Growing up."

She shakes her head with a sad smile. "Cliff and his family moved down from Canada when he was ten - moved in next to your father over on fourteenth street. He and your dad were inseparable friends. Cliff and I were high school sweethearts.."

"So what happened?"

She sighs, sticks her trowel in the dirt, and stands up, stretching her back. "The war came. Cliff had graduated in 1914 and when the war broke out he jumped on a train back to Canada to enlist. Your father had another year of school but Cliff was a sweet-talker. Got him to go with him all the way to the train station before he thought about what he was doing and declared he sure wasn't gonna go fight a war his country wasn't even in without finishing school first. Help me with those." Carwood picks up the tools and follows her to the shed..

"Wouldn't have taken him anyway, with that bum knee he got playing football. They sent Cliff off to the trenches in Europe.". They put the tools away and she leads him back across the yard to the cellar entrance.

"He wrote to both of us a lot at first, and we'd share the letters with each other. Well, most of them. Ah, here they are." She grabs a box from the shelf and hands it to him. He lifts the lid to find envelope after envelope, some stained, most faded. "Your father and I became good friends while he was gone, since aside from his folks we probably missed him the most. I was waiting for him to come home and marry me, and your father felt guilty for not being there with him."

"So why didn't you get married?"

"The letters stopped suddenly. We didn't get any for months and feared the worst. Then one day he showed up in Huntington, hobbling on crutches. He stayed with his folks for a bit, refused to really talk with anyone. He got drunk a lot. His mom said he rarely slept, shouted a lot in the night. Then one day he just left a note with his parents saying he had to take care of something and disappeared.

"No one saw him again. Your father and I eventually gave up waiting for him to come back. We'd grown so close we decided to just get married. Until he showed up four weeks ago, I didn't know whether Cliff was still alive."

"Did you ever find out what happened to him?"

She shook her head. "No. The war scarred a lot of people. Left a lot of broken hearts at home, and gave a lot of broken boys back to us."

"Do you think it could happen again? With what Hitler's doing in Europe?"

She looks at him with ancient eyes and shakes her head. A finger reaches out to wipe imaginary dirt above his eyebrow, leaving real dirt in its place. "I hope not, honey. I don't want you to ever have to go through that."

Carwood spends the rest of the afternoon reading the letters, trying not to blush too hard at some of the ones written to his mother. That evening, plans forgotten, he knocks on the man's door. It's a long time before he responds, long enough that Carwood is ready to turn away. He opens the door and sees him sitting up, playing with some green fabric in his hands. "Can I ask you some questions?"

We had to celebrate Christmas there in our foxholes in Bastogne. It wasn't very merry, but I did what I could to cheer the guys up. I swear you could hear quiet murmurs of "NUTS" coming from foxholes all night long, like that word had almost become a prayer. I spent part of that night going from foxhole to foxhole, joking with the guys, passing out my cigarettes. I'd greet each of them with a "ho ho ho" in my best Santa Claus imitation. Malarkey was the best. I found him on his way back from visiting the slit trench and he called me Jolly Ol' Saint Luz. I'm no saint really, but I kinda liked that. I tried to offer him a light right then but he shook his head, said he wanted to get back to share them with Muck and Penkala. Those three. Wish I could say there was nothing that could separate them.

Some time that night I ran into Lipton, also going between foxholes to make sure the boys were okay, though he wasn't passing out any fine tobacco. We nodded in passing and about five seconds later a mortar came by and we found ourselves sharing a nearby abandoned foxhole.

The thing I remember most about that Christmas was the sky. Brightest stars you've ever seen. Barely needed flares to light up that night. I looked at them for a bit and then looked at Lip. "Hard to believe those are the same stars we saw in Georgia, ain't it Lip?"

"Yeah boy," he nodded.

I lit one of my precious cigarettes and searched the night sky for anything red. "Hey Lip, is that my planet?" I pointed between the trees.

He smiled then, the way Lip does sometimes. That way that on anyone else would make you think they were laughing at you. "Yeah Luz, that's the one."

"Hell of a way to spend a Christmas, huh?"

He nodded and looked out toward the German line. We could still hear strains of "Silent Night" coming across to us. "You ever hear about the Christmas truce of 1914 Luz?"

"During the last war?"

"Yeah. They declared a truce, no weapons fired for Christmas. That was back when they thought the war would be over fast. At a lot of places the armies got out of their trenches and crossed into no man's land. They shared food, sang carols, played ball. Then they climbed back into their trenches and started killing each other again. Probably happened right in these woods."

I chuckled. Somehow I couldn't imagine wanting to share anything but bullets and maybe some bazooka rounds with the Krauts surrounding us. "Crazy way to fight a war. How do you know all this stuff, Lip? You didn't go to college and not tell us or something, did you? Part of the quiz they give you to become first sergeant?"

He shook his head. "We had an old soldier stay at our boarding house one summer."

We watched a barrage of shells hit not too far away and heard someone start screaming. At least it finally drowned out those endless repeats of German "Silent Night."

_For the next month, Carwood almost has a father again. He and Cliff go hunting, though Cliff refuses to carry a rifle. Mostly it is an excuse to talk. For Carwood to ask question after question about his father, a topic his mother is rarely interested in bringing up, or life in general. All the things a teenage boy can't really ask his mother. Cliff is happy to tell him just about anything. Unless it is about the war. The only time Carwood can get him to talk about that is when he's already had a few drinks._

One night near the end of August, Carwood is woken in the middle of the night by a pounding on his door. One of the paying tenants is there, wrapped in a robe and shaking mad. "That crazy tenant you got been shoutin' all night. I pounded on his door and tol' him to shut his trap but he just kept at it. I pay good money for my room and I spect to be able to sleep in it. If you don't get rid of him, you'll lose me and a lot of the other guys too."

"Okay, sir. I'm sorry, I'll take care of it," Carwood tries to appease the man, pulling a sweater over his head and shoes onto his feet as he heads out.

He knocks on Cliff's door and calls quietly, "Cliff? You okay in there? Cliff?" When there is no answer he takes out the keys and opens the door to an empty room. The bed is carefully made, and when he finds nothing in the drawers. He goes to close the open window, stop the curtains from blowing out, and sees a silhouette sitting on the log in the back.

He hurries out, stops a few feet away. "Cliff?" The man looks up, moonlight shining on wet spots on his cheeks.

"Don't worry, Carwood. I'll be gone in the morning. I won't bother them again."

Moving slowly, as he might around a spooked animal, Carwood sits down on the log. "Are you dreaming about the war when you start shouting like that?"

Cliff is silent for a long time, and Carwood begins cursing himself for pushing things too far. Finally Cliff looks at the moon and sighs, begins talking quietly, hauntedly.

"It was twenty years ago, night just like this one. We'd lost half our guys back at Ypres when the Krauts first tried their gas. Hit hard for weeks after - our commanders throwing bodies at the German lines, Germans trying to make new holes in ours. All the officers had gotten it one way or another. Bullets, gas, shells. We had one lieutenant who just ran off screaming and we never saw again. Just like that they put me in charge of the platoon, made me an acting officer.

"Thing is I wasn't an officer, I was one of the men. So I wasn't ordering 'my men' to get killed, I was ordering my friends.

"It was a massacre. All there was to it. Orders from above to just get out of our trenches and push at the lines, no way we could have survived. Just another way to fill the body bags. But I had to rally my men, push them over the trench, watch man after man go down screaming. Or just fall without a sound. Three of us survived, all injured. They nearly had to take my leg off, Jim lost his arm and Bill is a one-eyed carpenter out there somewhere. I spent hours there before the stretcher bearers found me, surrounded by their bodies, watching my men take their last breaths, hearing screams for god or their mothers. And it was all my fault. I ordered them out there. They were my responsibility"

Carwood wraps his arms around his legs, puts his chin on his knees and listens to the distant crickets. "But you said the orders were from above. It's not your fault they all died."

Cliff laughs a bit, shakes his head. "No, I was their acting officer. Was my job to protect them. After the war, I tried to go find all their parents, apologize to them. I spent half a day sitting on a bench near the first house before I lost my nerve. Spent the last twenty years moving from town to town with their ghosts always looking over my shoulder."

"You could stay here. I'm sure mom would let you live in the house with us. Settle down and rest. Let them rest."

He thinks a minute before shaking his head. "You know, Carwood, these past two months have been the longest I've stayed anywhere in twenty years. And it's been nice. Your mom's raised you right and your dad would have been proud of you, you know that? But I can't stay here anymore. I'm too restless. I need to find whatever it is I'm supposed to do before I can die in peace and I'm not going to find it here."

With a long-suffering sigh he rises from the log and shoulders his bag. Carwood sits a long time after the limping figure has disappeared into the moonlight, thinking that maybe, just maybe, Cliff could've found that peace by staying, giving this family the father it had been lacking. Then Clifford Carwood Lipton pads silently back into the house.

I think we all thought, after Patton's Second Armored rescued us, that the worst was over. That the new year would bring some relief. No way would we have believed the worst was still ahead.

Losing Hoobler was bad. I wasn't there, but Perc told me about it later when I found him sitting alone in a foxhole, freezing his little ass off. It wasn't like we hadn't lost plenty of other guys before. But Hoob was different somehow. Maybe it was because it was such a stupid accident. Maybe it was because Hoobler had always seemed somehow immortal, so untouched by the war that maybe it couldn't touch him. Perc couldn't stop talking about Buck, sliding his hand under Frank's, protecting him from feeling the pulse stop, taking the death himself. And about Lipton, talking through the first, second, third time Buck tried to tell him, encouraging Hoobler to still be alive.

Things only got worse the next day, when we lost Joe and Bill. Those guys were the toughest of everyone from Toccoa and we all thought they'd never really get it. Sure, Joe seemed to be collecting Purple Hearts the way I collect cigarettes, and Bill got hit in Holland, but they always came back. Seeing them bleeding on the snow, knowing they'd be gone for good, I started to really wonder if any of us would make it out of those woods. I know the other guys were thinking the same thing.

I called battalion like Lip asked and followed his footsteps - see if I could help. I found Buck first. He had his back to me, and the first thing I noticed was that he'd lost his helmet - that hair of his damn near blended into the snow. He jumped when I called his name, then turned around and looked through me. He wasn't blind like Blithe had been, but it looked like he wanted to be.

What really scared me was the way he was crying - no tears, no weeping, just his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish out of water. I led him, babbling god knows what, over to sit on a fallen tree. He wouldn't look, wouldn't respond, but I just kept talking at him until I looked up and saw Lip glancing at us.

I don't know why I told Lip that Buck was fine. I mean, he sure wasn't hit. Maybe by saying it I could make it true. Make Joe and Bill fine too. Bring Hoobler back. And while I was at it, all the other guys we'd lost, too. Hell, so long as I was working miracles I shoulda just brought back everyone from the whole damn war.

Lip talked to Buck, since no one else could, got him sent back to the aid station with Joe and Bill. And then the company was all Lipton's.

The night Muck and Penkala got it, it shoulda been me. I was the idiot stuck in the open, losing his helmet, getting blown ass over ears by the shells. I can still hear them shouting at me. Still hear the second when everything went quiet.

I don't remember how I got to Lip's foxhole, but suddenly he was there, grabbing me, pulling me in, and clutching me, holding me together. I really think I would have fallen into a million pieces if he hadn't been. When that dud shell hit, I knew we were finished, would have bits of each other all mixed together forever. I think that may have been the first time I lit up around Lip without offering him one first. Go figure that was the first time he took a cigarette.

When things grew quiet - long after things grew quiet - Lip stood up. I started to join him but he shook his head. "I'm just gonna go check Muck and Penkala's hole. I'll be right back." I didn't want to go there.

I watched him weave away through the trees and then come back, trying hard not to think about anything. "What'd you find?"

"Nothing." He squatted at the edge of the hole and looked at me a minute. "I'm gonna go check on the rest of the company and I want you to stay here. You going to be okay Luz?" I musta looked pretty bad if he was asking me that but I just nodded, pulled out another cigarette, and waved him off. He had enough to worry about without me causing trouble.

I smoked three cigarettes, right after each other. I tried to sleep. I started counting the number of guys we'd lost in these woods. I don't know how long I waited for Lip to get back - it felt like hours, but was probably only fifteen minute - but if I stayed there any longer I was going to turn into Buck. I realized I had to go find Muck and Penk - they were always good for a late night chat.

I was halfway to their hole when I remembered. Realized I couldn't go find Buck either. Or Bill or Joe or Hoobler or…

I found Liebgott and Alley, sat with them a little bit and moved on to Frank and Johnny and then Roe and Spina. I spent all night bouncing between foxholes - never did find Lipton. The sky was getting light when I saw Malarkey and Babe asleep in a foxhole. I could tell Lip must not have come by - Malarkey was smiling in his sleep. Those Irish boys can sleep through anything.

I shook Malarkey silently, hoping maybe we wouldn't have to wake Babe up too. Malark jumped a bit. "Lay off, wouldya, Luz?" he slapped my hand away. "The naked native girl was about to bite."

"Muck and Penkala got hit."

He turned white as the snow. His mouth opened and closed a few times and for a second I was worried this would be Buck all over again. "Are…did…how…Is Doc Roe with 'em? Did you call a Jeep yet?" he asked, climbing out of the hole. "I didn't hear anyone shout for a medic." Babe muttered at the cold air and tucked the blanket in tighter.

I just looked at him. "The shell landed in their hole. There's nothing left for Doc Roe to save."

I hadn't thought he could go any paler. But he did. And his eyes just sorta died. He looked ready to fall over, and I reached out to steady him. His voice sounded dead. "I need to see it."

I squeezed his shoulder, then led him to the empty hole where Lip and Doc Roe were already looking for anything left. Malark sat nearby as we poked around trying to find anything. All I found to give him was a bit of Skip's rosary. He clutched it like a lifeline.

Lipton was worried about Malarkey. We all were really, but it was Lipton's job to do something about it. He took him off the line for just long enough to go back and say good-bye to Buck. I kinda wonder whether the trip was more for Malarkey or Lipton though.

Ever since that shelling we'd been sharing the same foxhole. No real spoken decision about it, just kept doing it. Malarkey kept sitting in with Babe, and Perc seemed to be latched onto Johnny, and everyone else I tended to share with was, well, gone. And Lipton had always ghosted between foxholes. He got back late that night, climbed in quietly, but I wasn't asleep.

"How's Malarkey?"

Lipton shook his head, then reached out to take the cigarette I'd just placed in my own mouth. I was gonna have to find some more if he planned to keep this up. "I don't know. He seems to be holding up somehow. I just don't know on what."

"What about Buck?"

"They're taking him off the line for a while. Sending him back to help out regiment."

"Did you talk to him?"

"Yeah." He didn't say more, and suddenly, I didn't want to press. Something about the look on his face, the way he hunched inward just a little bit when he said that.

_In some ways he loves Huntington. It's the only home he's ever known, and he loves its streets, the banks of the river, the hills beyond town. He loves its people, its traditions. But sometimes he feels that Huntington is stifling him. He graduated high school and kept running the boarding house. About the only thing different now is that he's married and lives in a small house of his own with his wife. Deep down, he knows he'll never escape this place. That his life will always be like it is right now._

Some nights he gets restless and carefully climbs out of bed, trying to not disturb the warm sleeping body in it. He goes and roams the streets at two a.m., when everything is dark and quiet and usually his breath makes small, white puffs in the chilly air. He'll go and climb the hill behind town. From its peak he can see the whole city, nuzzling against the river.

He wouldn't ever admit it to anyone, but sometimes he sits there and curses his father. Curses him for working with the bootleggers, taking that second job driving alcohol to secret places at night. Because if he hadn't done it, he wouldn't have been out that night, wouldn't have died, wouldn't have left Carwood stuck where he was. But he knows that's selfish, knows his father's death didn't cause the stock market crash, knows his father was only doing it to try to make life better for his family.

Sometimes he contemplates just climbing on one of the boats, hiring himself out and going where the river takes him. Or he stares up at the stars and wonders if he just picked one and followed, where it might lead him. There is a small voice inside him that whispers of the world beyond his grasp, all the possibilities he'll never see. But he has responsibilities here and so he tries to stifle that voice. He only indulges it as far as the local library, where he reads about the things he'll never do.

The Japanese break up the monotony of his days. The whole country is swept up in a war fervor and Carwood lets himself be carried along for the ride. Like any good home in America, they get Life Magazine and one week Carwood opens it to read about paratroopers. He reads about the difficult training, how only the best make it through. By the end he knows this is the division for him. It's his chance to prove to himself what he can do - that he is good enough to be among the best. But he also is realistic that he'll likely be drafted soon anyway, and he'd rather serve in a unit like this, with the best, where he can trust the man next to him.

He rises early that morning, makes breakfast, leaves the magazine open in front of his wife's plate. She comes down rubbing sleep from her eyes and sits in her usual chair. He hands her a cup of coffee which she takes gratefully. "Thanks, honey. What's this?" she reaches for the magazine.

"An article. About the army unit I'm going to join."

She puts the mug down and looks at him. "Oh, Carwood, I don't want you fighting in that war. You run that boarding house; you support your mother. Surely you can get a deferment."

"I can't stay here and hide behind that house while every other man my age enlists." His chin sets with a hint of stubbornness. "And the airborne only takes volunteers. You have to be the best to make it - so I'll be safer with them. I'll be fighting with the best."

She looks uncertain.

"It's fifty extra dollars a month."

She gets up, walks over, puts her arms around his neck and looks him in the eye. "I don't care about the money, Carwood. We can make ends meet here. If you really want this, I'm not going to stop you. But you have to promise me something."

He looks at her, so young and pretty. "What?"

"When it's over, you come home to me. And you come home in one piece."

He looks into her eyes, sees un-masked fear. He remembers Cliff, and his mother's story, thinks that coming home with all his limbs isn't enough. But this is something he has to do. He looks her in the eyes and with all the honesty he has tells her, "I promise."

He wastes no time that morning and walks right to the recruiting station in downtown Huntington. When his name is called Carwood walks up to the desk and tells the officer he's going to be a paratrooper.

The last week before he ships out to Toccoa his wife clings to him and his mother oscillates between avoiding him and not letting him out of her sight. The last night, after his wife is sound asleep he sneaks outside, goes out to the log behind the boarding house and watches the full moon track across the sky. And hopes he can keep his promise.

After he got better, Lip teased me that I'd given him pneumonia - blamed it on the smoking. He sure didn't seem to mind me taking care of him when he was sick though.

The day of that patrol he snuck out to tell Malarkey. I was busy with the radio, Speirs was wherever Speirs runs off to, and when I turned around the couch was empty. I went outside, hoping to find him, hoping he hadn't collapsed in some alley. He hadn't. Barely. I found him around the corner, leaning against a wall, wheezing between deep, dry coughs.

"C'mon, Lip. You're not doing anybody any good making yourself sicker. Let's get you to bed," I told him, thinking maybe we'd better tie him down this time. I draped his arm around my shoulder, put my other arm around his waist, and half carried him back inside. He barely protested when I led him past the couch and into the room Speirs had set up for him, where I was sure a bed was hiding underneath the pile of blankets.

I sat him down, got his boots off, and helped him lie back, propped up on pillows. "Okay, Lip. Now you stay there this time, all right?"

His eyes cracked open just a bit. "Just had to do my job, Luz," he wheezed.

He slept the rest of the day but it got bad again in the evening. He just kept coughing, and I could tell the fever was getting higher. Speirs let me stay back and watch over him, saying the rest of the regiment could handle the covering fire. Frank was supposed to meet the boats, so he promised he'd come and give me any news.

The minute we opened fire, letting loose on those Germans with every machine gun and rifle we had, Lip shot straight up in bed. He fought like a madman against the tangle of blankets around him. I jumped outta my chair, tried to push him back, shocked by how hot his skin was.

"Gotta get up. I gotta help them. They're out there. They need me," he kept repeating over and over, fighting me.

I practically shook him. Told him a few times they were okay, that he needed to lie back, had to shout at him before he stopped. He looked me full in the face and I saw sudden recognition flood into his eyes. He sat still and shook his head, as though he wanted to see if it would rattle.

"I'm sorry, Luz."

"It's okay Lip. Just stay put, all right? If you don't get better Doc Roe's going to have to send you back to the aid station. You should be there anyway."

He just shook his head, not willing to consider it. "Could you get me a coffee?"

"Sure Lip. But you'd better promise not to leave the bed while I'm gone." He nodded and sunk back into the pillows.

I'd just handed Lip the coffee when Perc came in and told us about Jackson. He walked out, limping enough that I wondered if I'd find myself with two patients to nurse.

I turned to find Lip just staring into his coffee. "You know, Luz, they're making me an officer. I'm going to have to act like one."

"Christ Lip, you've lead us all along. This doesn't have to make any difference."

"Yes. It does."

"How? And don't tell me you wanna be more like Dike."

He shook his head and looked at me a second. "You've been in the army long enough, Luz. You've seen how officers have to keep apart. I've got to do that now."

"But Buck didn't…"

"Luz, Buck is exactly why I have to. Why do you think Buck broke down? He didn't follow the rules, he didn't keep himself apart from us. I need to do that or I'm going to end up like him."

I grinned a bit, uncertain what to tell him. "C'mon Lip, a star can't just leave a constellation like that."

He smiled back at me. "Well, Luz. Maybe I'm not a star then. Maybe I'm that planet you're always pointing to. I'm a part of the sky, but I wander around, sometimes in one constellation, sometimes another. I guess I'm leaving this constellation - moving to another part of the sky"

With that he lay back and went to sleep, most peaceful sleep I'd seen from him in days. I reached out and found his hand, hidden under the pile of blankets Speirs had dumped in here. I squeezed it quickly and then headed out, to find Perco or someone. Find some way to pass the night without thinking about Jackson.

I stopped at the doorway to make sure he wasn't about to sneak out when my back was turned, but he was out cold. "You know Lip, someone told me once that aside from the moon, planets are the brightest lights in the sky. That, and they always keep returning to the same constellations."

******

"Lip was true to his word. We certainly saw plenty of him, since he was still our officer, but he kept apart the way the other officers did, all except Buck. He'd still watch out for us, help where he was needed. But he was no longer there to play cards or watch movies, or, well, just be one of the guys.

"After the war Lipton went to college. I always knew he was a smart one. He became really good at doing something with glass - I never really understood what. He traveled the world, and whenever we had reunions he'd have some new adventure to tell us, some new set of souvenirs to give away. Through it all, he kept looking after us. He always knew if one of us got married or had a kid and sometimes, if you were going through a bad time, he'd show up on your doorstep, help out for a few days and leave as quietly as he came."

The man stops, kicks a foot at the handful of cigarette butts on the ground and looks up. "Anything else you wanted to know?" The room is silent, then the light turns off.

"You coulda left that on long enough for me to find the door you know," the man mutters, stumbling over his chair until he finds the door to go outside. He walks down a dirt road as the last light of the day shines on rolling fields and green hedges. A smile splits his face as he rounds a bend and sees a stone building - smoke coming from the chimney, door opened invitingly.

Inside he stops by a booth where three men are bowed over pints of ale, whispering to each other. He shakes his head, "All right boys, what mischief are you plotting this time?" Hoobler's ears turn bright red, Penkala suddenly becomes fascinated by a scratch in the table, and Muck just looks up and grins.

"Us, Luz? What makes you think we'd ever cause any trouble?" he winks, twirling his spoon between his fingers.

The man only shakes his head and walks to the bar, passing another table where a dark-haired man and short, curly-haired man with a gap-toothed grin are downing pints of their own. He gets a pint, on the house, from the girl behind the bar ,and after surveying the room decides to go outside, drink it with the sunset.

He's only just sat down on the bench to watch the sun disappear behind the hills when Joe Toye comes out on two good legs, glass in hand, and joins him on the bench.

For a while they sit in silence, drinking slowly. When the last rays have disappeared Toye asks him, "How'd it go?"

"Think Lipton might be joining us soon."

Joe nods and they sit and watch the first stars of the evening come out. Two white and one a twinkling red.


End file.
